5/22/2009

Inspired by Lewis

Excuse My absence, please. I will try to be posting more often now.

It has always confused me in some of these past years why some people will be convincing Christians a day and the next drop there beliefs all at once. My dad pointed out one day at church that it is sometimes just that people are doubting their faith conveniently when a temptation shows up. They still know whats right but they would feel less bad about it all as if it was Satan playing his mind tricks on their brains so that it was almost inevitable for anyone that was not Jesus to resist. So they start doubting. When they "come back to the faith" in their heads they feel that they have done God some sort of favor for regaining the faith. Really they have just been complete idiots.

But another argument people will use is completely irrational. People will say "Why should I believe what these Christians are saying when I know they are hypocrites?" This is usually taken up by youths and mostly teenagers. But C.S. Lewis poses the question which they should be asking. He asks, "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" Argument in question form quickly tears the typical question apart. It is not really a sound argument for any group to point out vices of people who belong to another. It does not say anything for the groups point of view.

1 comment:

This quote from Lewis reminds me of Christ saying to the crowds "...first take the log out of your own eye, and then will you see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." One ought to recognize sins among his brothers in the Lord so that he might be able to pray for them and and urge them to not do such things, but we must do all of this in the humble context that we ourselves are flawed as well, probably more than those we wish to correct. One ought not be hypocritically self-righteous but instead loving. One must recognized that no one, especially not himself, is made perfect the instant they repent.A struggling individual whose faith is ultimately in the Lord is still saved, but if they falter, the immediate assumption that their sin is bad fruit of a bad tree is a flawed one. Unsaved hypocrites are abundant within the church, but overreaction to a sin to the point of making an accusation of hypocrisy based upon it can often be unfounded. Serving Christ is not legalistic, and so moral perfection, which all mortals come short of, should not be the basis for judging hypocrisy.Righteousness is only part of the spectrum of characteristics carried by Christians, and is the result, not the thing itself. Faith and repentance are the thing making one a Christian, and as long as one has those things, he is saved, and will naturally become righteous.